


on a wander

by triggernometry



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Ashspine Widow (Flight Rising), Body Horror, Gen, Ridgeback (Flight Rising), Tundra (Flight Rising), skin-stealers (original work)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 08:05:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17443073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggernometry/pseuds/triggernometry
Summary: You meet all kinds out there in the Wasteland.





	on a wander

[Amos](http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=2226&tab=dragon&did=43756565) is out in the Wasteland on his own. Well, _mostly_ on his own. Shushpup, the ashspine widow, has skittered off to wind big circles around him beyond his field of vision; she'll be back around on her own time, he knows. She just likes to scout ahead.

He's only managed about a half-hour's amble from the stone and deadwood circle of home, even though it feels like he's been out here _forever_ because  there's just _so much_ to look at, all the time, everywhere. The novelty is wearing off, a little, now this isn't his first, second, even third time out alone.

For example, he only spent _five_ minutes studying an interesting beetle scuttling from one saggy-eyed fungal tendril to another instead of _twenty-_ five _._ Progress.

Amos turns to look back towards home. With his mask on and the eyes in his face covered, home just looks like another piece of the open Wasteland. If he squints hard, he can make out the curve of Mama's magic on it, but that's only because he knows what to look for and where. The clusters of eyes on his neck and peering out from between the collar of his shirt just can't see home all the way.

If he lifts his mask, he can see it just fine. The first few times he went out on his own, he always stopped at least once to look homeward with his regular eyes, just to be sure home was still there. His fingers twitch and he thinks about doing that now – but no. Not this time.

Pop tells him that bravery is best served in small doses, which, he supposes, applies to this moment as good as any other. Amos turns back toward the open Wasteland and starts walking again.

He doesn't take much with him on these excursions: a skin of water, a square of podid jerky wrapped in a kerchief, and a horn-handled knife Pop gave him and taught him how to sharpen, clean, and, to some extent, use. The first two things were easy enough to learn; the last one is a work in progress. Amos knows he doesn't need the knife out here, but it makes the lines in Pop's face go soft and easy when he takes it with him, so he doesn't fuss about it.

It doesn't make _anything_ about Mama go soft and easy but she doesn't ever say anything besides _In a while_ when he goes. One time he said _Bye_ to her before going out for a wander and she almost forbade him to leave ever again, so now he just says _In a while_ right back.

Mid-step he remembers yesterday's vague plan to make it as far as the Wound Road on his wander. He lifts his gaze from scanning the ground for interesting bugs or rocks and instead scans the horizon ahead, looking for the spider-leg skitter of the Road's magic against the sky. It's hard to see against the coil-uncoil of the miasma sometimes, but – no, there it is. He adjusts course slightly and heads for it.

Who knows, maybe this time he'll _reach_ it, and then he'll have to keep that achievement from absolutely everyone, because Mama will probably _kill_ him and then he will for sure never get to go on another wander ever again.

Shushpup patters back into his periphery and gives a rattle of her spines in greeting. Amos stops long enough to bend down and lightly draw the knuckles of two fingers over her head, between her clusters of eyes the way she likes. Shushpup shudders pleasantly and falls into step beside him.

It's early enough in the day yet that some things are still out and about in the Wasteland, besides Amos and Shushpup. A rust-coloured skink, all but invisible against the ruddy landscape, observes him from a nearby rock as he passes, its hide stippled with delicate nodules. Amos makes to approach it and the skink breaks out in blisters of yellow-green eyes before it scampers down the rock and out of sight.

Shushpup pauses to watch the skink go, mandibles clicking thoughtfully – but she leaves off whatever vague notions of pursuit she might have and scurries doubletime to catch Amos up.

Somewhere between their current position and the spider-leg skitter of magic on the horizon, bonepickers weave lazy circles high up in the miasma. Amos has learned that following bonepickers is a good way to find the most interesting things in the Wasteland: dead things.

(When he'd told Pop this the first time, Pop had let loose a laugh that bubbled up from him like a spring and said to Mama _From the mouth of babes_ and Mama had shaken her head and turned away before anyone could catch her grinning.)

Amos puts his thumb and forefinger to the sky just like Pop showed him and decides it's not too far out of his way to investigate whatever the bonepickers might've found. His mind fills with images of what it could be: an animal, most likely, but it could also be something more exotic.

Once, while he and Mama were on a wander together, they found a dead person. The body'd been sunk down in the soil a bit on account of how the dragon in life had walked a circle so tight for so long they'd worn a track right down into the earth.

Mama had told him that sometimes dragons following the Road get lured off of it, and see things that aren't there. She'd said that one had probably thought they were on the way to somewhere special before thirst or hunger or exhaustion or all three had dropped them down into the track for good. Mama'd forbade him from touching the body with anything less than a stick, warning him that strangers veered off from the Road could be dangerous even after death, were sometimes even _more_ dangerous after death.

Beside him, Shushpup pushes air through her middle to produce a warning hiss almost too low to hear. Amos snaps out of his aimless imaginings in a hurry and looks up.

Up ahead must be what the bonepickers are circling, only it sure isn't dead yet. It's a dragon, all right: standing up and walking in a curious slantwise way, like they're forging a path through a duststorm only they can see. The stranger's form is stocky, heavy, covered over in layers of dark, tattered cloth that flaps in raggedy streamers behind them as they move. From this angle and distance, their head and face is mostly obscured by their hat, though Amos gets the vague impression of horns sweeping back from their face like blunt branches of a stunted tree.

They haven't seen him yet. Shushpup's hiss wasn't loud enough to attract any attention, and now the spider's fallen into tense silence by Amos' leg. He stands there for a minute, watching the stranger and trying to decide what he ought to do. Mama would _for sure_ tell him to turn tail and leave, and Pop –

Well, Pop'd tell him to turn tail and leave _faster_.

Still. The stranger doesn't _seem_ dangerous, at least from this vantage point. Not that he would really know how to spot a dangerous stranger from a regular one; he figures he probably has to see a lot of them before he gets the hang of it, like how he had to pick through a lot of different kinds of rocks to find all the best ones to fill Pop's coat pockets.

Amos has only a vague memory from when he was younger of meeting a stranger in the Wasteland: their skin had been dry and rough and thin under his hand, and the light around them wasn't crackling and restless like the light around Mama, or sluggishly recrudescing like the light around Pop. The light around that stranger had been more like a feeling: frenetic, volatile, unhappy. He'd once seen Shushpup leap clear of his lap to pounce on a poison-coloured cockroach and devour it in still-twitching pieces, and that flash of sudden strife had been what that stranger's light had looked like.

The light around the one before him now isn't like any of those others. It looks stranger, less tangible, less like something with its own light and more like something revealed by the light from somewhere else. It makes him think of shadows moving behind a well-lit canvas: something seen only because it obscures what ought to be visible.

Amos knows he _definitely_ ought to go now, but he doesn't. The stranger's weird slantwise walk stutters, then stops, and then the stranger looks right up and at him. Amos feels the eyes under his clothes all snap open together, rolling against the fabric and staring hard ahead.

Shushpup hisses again, louder this time. He can hear her spines starting to clatter discordantly as she shakes herself in agitation.

[The stranger](http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=2226&tab=dragon&did=44707658)'s form up ahead shudders, turns, and then they're just – _there._ Amos feels like he just had a full-body blink: one minute the stranger is a silhouette of poor detail far away and the next minute they're right up close in front of him, stooping down a little to have a look at him with rosy eyes that seem to hang in some dark distance behind the sockets of their face.

“Do you know me?” the stranger asks. The inside of their lower lip is black, vanishing up against teeth dark and brown as old, wet wood.  
  
Amos studies the stranger's face a minute, trying to decide if he does. They don't look like any dragon he's seen before, all blunt-nosed with a whole lot more hair than even Mama – hair all over, he guesses, with the bulk of it cut close to make weird little curlicue patterns the like of which he's never seen before. The fur of the stranger's face is stippled with irregular streaks of colour the same shade of the yellowed pages in Mama's book; the discordant brightness of the stripes against the ruddy darkness of the stranger's face make him think of under-ripe fruit, stinging and sour. Long locks of mane hang down from under the stranger's hat, coarse and tangled like the hair of something wild.

“No,” he says finally, shaking his head for good measure.

The stranger leans in and breathes in deep. When they breathe out again, their breath buffets Amos' face and brings with it a faintly spicy, earthy smell that's not altogether unpleasant but is nonetheless odd. Shushpup beside him must be bristling hard enough to just about shake herself apart: her spines don't rattle so much now as emit a constant sussurrus like whispers lost in a windstorm.

“Who do you know?” the stranger asks, leaning back a little. Their far-away pink moon eyes flicker from Amos' face to Shushpup and back again.

“Don't know you,” Amos says. He shifts his weight a little to bring one foot up and nudge it gently against Shushpup's side, herding her. She hisses again, but follows his lead, retreating enough for him to take one definitive step back.

The stranger stares at him a while, then, slowly, smiles. It's not a regular kind of smile, or, at least, not the kind of smile Amos is used to seeing. Smiles usually stop at some point; this one just kind of sags upward like melting wax, stretching along the stranger's face far beyond what seems usual. Amos can see the stranger's back teeth and a good bit of shiny black gums besides by the time the smile creaks to a halt.

“I'm looking for someone,” the stranger says, once their melty-wax smile fades again.

“Maybe they don't wanna get found,” Amos says.

“Maybe.” The stranger inclines their head in a long, slow nod; the black metal coins hanging from their ears clink softly with the motion. “You'll have a gift of me if you help me find them.”

“Pop says to mind my own business,” Amos says, then immediately regrets it. Mama's told him a hundred times never to use names – not even nicknames or family ones like _Pop_ or _Mama_ – around strangers, and he's promised her a hundred times he never would, and now he's gone and done it, just like that. The stranger's pink moon eyes take on a sheen of interest.

“Pop,” the stranger repeats slowly, like they're tasting the word. “What is that?”

Amos takes another step back. He glances briefly beyond the stranger's shoulder, toward the spider-leg skitter of the Road's magic against the miasma. He's probably not going to make it today, but he is definitely going to make it _some_ day, so he needs to leave.

“Sun's gettin' on,” Amos says, flicking his gaze back to the stranger's face. Never mind that it's barely mid-morning or that they've got at least another hour before the suggestion of sun behind the miasma starts making shadows out here short and skittish. _Sun's getting on_ is what Mama or Pop says when there's trouble and he has to go somewhere safe – home, by preference, unless he's followed, in which case: hide, and hide good.

_And the night's hungry_ is what Pop adds when he means for Amos to go home and get Mama and all her guns. Amos has never had to do that yet, but the longer he stares at this stranger, the more he suspects he might have to soon.

Amos backs up a few more steps until he feels reasonably sure he's not in the stranger's reach. The stranger doesn't move, just watches him go with unblinking, unwavering eyes. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to turn and start back the way he came.  
  
He counts to five silently in his head and turns to look back.

The stranger is gone.

Amos walks a little bit more and stops again to look behind him. The stranger's still gone, only they're _not_ , not really – Amos can feel those far-away pink moon eyes on him from somewhere, even if he currently can't see another soul in any direction. He stands still for a good while, slowly turning his head to and fro, taking in the Wasteland around him. The feeling of being watched persists.

Shushpup stays beside him while he surveys the landscape, then seems to grow restless at their combined stillness and starts towards home again. She makes a half-dozen steps or so before she notices he's not following her and turns around to regard him curiously with her clusters of eyes.

“We can't go home yet,” Amos says, not raising his voice much louder than a whisper. He knows Shushpup can hear him just fine, and he is – for perhaps the first time in his life – suddenly afraid to make too much noise in the open Wasteland.

Shushpup sags a little, but doesn't take much more coaxing than that to come back to him. Amos crouches down to pet her head, and to try and gather his thoughts.

The stranger is most probably – definitely – dangerous. They're definitely still watching him. They'll follow him home and then – well. Amos is pretty sure Mama'd take care of it, but then she'll _for sure_ kill him, or at least forbid him from ever going outside again, and all of that just seems like a lot of fuss.

Amos stands up again. He doesn't look around this time, just orients himself to the spider-leg skitter on the horizon and heads in the direction of the Road one more time. He imagines the stranger following him all the way to the Road, and wonders if the magic of the Road would keep the stranger at bay. Would it keep _Amos_ at bay? Pop would probably advise against provoking an obvious danger – no, Pop would _definitely_ advise against provoking an obvious danger. Amos hurries his step a bit. Shushpup scuttles after him.

It's a long moment before the stranger makes an appearance again. It's so long, in fact, that Amos is almost sure he'd misjudged, and that the stranger had actually left and he's been trying to mislead his own shadow all this time. By this point Amos is closer to the Road than he's ever been and for a moment he forgets all about the stranger and just stands there, staring in open-mouthed awe at the ripple and slide of magic radiating off the Road to mingle with the miasma above.  
  
Amos doesn't see soap often, but that's where his mind goes first: the magic coming off the Road looks like the skin of a soap bubble, stretched out impossibly huge in the air before him. It looks alive, like a tangle of snakes moving every-which-way, like the side of a winded trunker run down to exhaustion by a pack of poxhounds. It looks dangerous.

Amos immediately resolves to touch it.

He makes it just shy of arm's reach before he feels a claw catch in the back of his vest. He hears some of the fabric give, and feels a stab of annoyance at the cloth Pop stitched for him special getting ripped before he feels any real fear for his own safety. The claw wrenches him backward, sends him flying away from the Road. Shushpup produces her fiercest hiss yet; Amos can see her, still standing between him and the Road, and she rears up on her hindmost limbs to show off her fangs, splayed and slick with venom.

Amos lands on his back in the dirt with a thud and a grunt, and looks up to see the stranger's face looming over him.

“Who do you _know?_ ” The question is more insistent this time. The stranger's voice has suddenly much more inflection than before, sounds almost like a regular dragon's voice for the first time – and that somehow makes it so much more unsettling to hear it coming out of that slack, impassive face.

Amos makes to get to his feet again, but the stranger is faster than he is, reaching down with a snake-quick hand to grab him by the neck and push him back down into the dust, pinning him.

“ _Who_ do you _know?_ ”

The pressure on his throat is bad enough – the feeling of the stranger's skin against his own is even worse. The skin of the stranger's hand is feverishly hot and roiling with movement, as if a hundred smaller things were scurrying just under the surface. Amos coughs, chokes, flails at the stranger's hand, torn between needing to wrest it off himself and too grossed out to even want to _touch_ it.

“ _Who do you--”_

One minute, the stranger's bearing down on him with those unnatural, far-away eyes and twisting skin and teeth the colour of old wood – the next minute, all Amos can see is the furious flailing of eight limbs as Shushpup flings herself over his body and onto the stranger's face. He hears a wet tearing sound and the stranger recoils, releasing their grip on his neck and falling backward, scrabbling to get a grip on Shushpup.  
  
Amos gets to his feet and turns just in time to see the stranger fling Shushpup to the ground. Their one eye is gone now, leaving only a ragged, bloodless hole in the rough shape of an ashspine widow's bite with something too dark to be blood shining dully in the exposed flesh. The stranger's cheek is wet with venom. Shushpup rights herself in the blink of an eye and rounds on the stranger once more, bristling with greater fury than Amos has ever seen her muster before.  
  
The stranger lifts one boot to ready a kick; Amos scrambles for Shushpup, desperate to grab her and pull her away. His hands clasp around the widow with a thunderclap that rattles the teeth in his head and makes his many eyes stare wild in every direction. Amos folds himself over Shushpup and braces for an impact that never comes. He's still a moment, breathless, waiting.  
  
He lifts his head, very slowly, and looks up to see the stranger staring off behind him, with a great big ragged hole where their wounded eye and half their skull besides used to be. Behind them, there's their hat and a big chunk of meat and clumps of hair on the ground. Amos can just about make out the ear still attached to it.

The stranger lifts one hand slowly and gently, almost tenderly, pets the edges of their head wound. The skin around the hole has an odd quality, looking less like wounded flesh and more like broken pottery or a ripped flap of leather. _Unnatural_. Inside is just more formless dark; Amos can't even see a flash of bone.

Amos hugs Shushpup to his chest and gets unsteadily to his feet, scuttling backward and turning around to see what's behind him only when he figures he's out of leaping distance from the stranger.

Coming up off – from? Amos has no memory of seeing even a single traveler – the Road is a short, stocky [figure ](http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=2226&tab=dragon&did=26127895)in about a hundred different layers of raggedy old cloth the colour of dirt. The teeth on the chimera-head hood the figure wears gleam bright in the midday sun; beneath them, Amos can make out the figure's actual teeth bared in a determined grimace, the long canines agleam with silver caps. The figure has at least as much hair as the stranger, cropped close save for the cheeks and chin, which are heavy with beaded braids.

The figure's got a long rifle in hand, the nose pointed square at the stranger behind Amos. The light around the figure is bright and surging, alive like Mama's, and looking at it makes Amos break into a smile for no particular reason he can name.

In his arms, Shushpup gives a curious chitter and then begins to squirm, wriggling loose of his hold like a buttered eel and bounding to close the distance between him and the figure before he can blink any one of his eyes. Shushpup does not attack, just kind of skids to a halt beside the figure and looks up at them as if in silent greeting. Amos stares.

“I'll advise you to follow the direction of your pet there an' get outta the firin' range, boy,” the figure says, in a rough voice that sounds like at least a hundred rocks all settling down at once. She gestures lightly with the business end of the rifle to illustrate her point, and Amos starts in place, shuffling quickly to follow Shushpup's lead and get out of the way.

The stranger has recovered from their momentary shock and now watches the three of them with their one remaining eye. Amos can't make out even a little bit of anger, or pain, or anything in those far-away pink moon eyes and that impassive, half-ruined face.

“An' I'll advise _you,”_ the dragon with the rifle says, taking two steps closer to the stranger and drawing back the bolt with a crack loud enough to make Amos jump in his own skin, “to gather the sense to know when your battles're lost.”

The stranger hesitates. Amos can almost feel it thinking it over, can almost feel the seconds ticking away between them and the one with the rifle – and then the stranger lunges, dropping to all fours to close the distance with horrific speed. The cry in Amos' throat is swallowed up by another thunderclap as the rifle fires, catching the stranger in the shoulder and throwing them back, hard, into the dirt.

As they scramble to their feet again, the dragon with the rifle shifts her grip on her gun to reach into the many layers of her clothes and pull out a – well, a stick. A wooden stick, with one end cut into a sharp point. She closes the distance between herself and the stranger with decisive steps, then bears down with more speed and ferocity that he would expect for one who seems so old. She slams the sharp end of the stick through the hole in the stranger's shoulder and down, sinking it into the earth and pinning them in place.

Amos gets a whiff of cedarwood smoke and something else – something peppery and stinging – and then the stranger clutches at their speared shoulder and _howls._

The old dragon gets to her feet again and quickly steps away from the stranger. She holds the rifle aimed and ready at the stranger's head as she retreats back to Amos.

The stranger doesn't follow her, doesn't even attempt to stand, just lies pinned in the dirt, writhing and howling like – well, like something Amos doesn't know what. The light around them turns chaotic, splintering and jittering, and gives Amos a queasy feeling in his stomach just to look at.

“C'mon.” The dragon with the rifle is standing next to him now, hand outstretched. Amos takes the hand, slowly, and feels the rough, calloused skin of the other's palm against his. There's something comforting in the feeling.

“I ain't know much about you 'cept you got a spider for a pet an' your pa's about a year past his expiration date,” she says, guiding him away from the screaming stranger on the ground and toward the Road, “so you'll have to fill me in on the particulars. You good to travel the Road?”

“I dunno,” Amos says. He forces himself to stop staring at the writhing form behind them and turns to look at the looming soap-bubble skin of the Road ahead of him. “Never been on it before. It looks real pretty.”

“You see the magic on it?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

The old dragon hefts the rifle against her shoulder and lets go of his hand before crossing through the soap-bubble skin of magic and stepping onto the Road. She disappears as she goes, growing at first transparent and then gone altogether as the magic closes behind her. For a moment, all Amos can do is blink and stare at where the old dragon ought to be. Slowly, he lifts the mask from his eyes and then he can see her again.

She's lifted up her chimera-head hood and giving him a careful, curious look.

“Magic make you sick?” she asks him.

Amos shakes his head. “I been in Mama's magic, it don't hurt none.”

“Cedarwood fire?”

“Makes Pop sneeze. I don't mind it so much.”

The older dragon grins, and now he can make out etchings on the long canines as well as the silver caps. “Well, s'pose the only thing to do's stick in a toe an' find out.”

Amos hesitates. He's not afraid, he realises. Beside him, Shushpup leans against his leg briefly, companionably, before stepping through the soap-bubble shine and settling on the Road. She doesn't burst into flames or do whatever it is the Road is meant to do to things it doesn't like, so he takes that as an encouraging sign. Amos pokes one boot over the barrier. The tingling in his toes is a bit of a shock, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

“It tickles!”

“Daylight's burnin', boy,” the older dragon says.

Amos steps onto the Road. The tickle from his toes spreads all over in a rush, almost knocking the wind out of him – and then it's gone just as quickly. Amos takes in a long, slow breath and lets it out through his nose.

“Huh,” Amos says finally, looking around. From the inside, the soap-bubble shine is harder to see, but he's still able to make it out against the miasma.

“We'll follow the Road a while, make sure that good-for-nothin' don't follow us or call its friends,” the older dragon says. She gestures him to follow, and they start down the Road together. “It hurt you any?”

Amos pats his body down as he walks, checking for any injuries he might have missed. He's pretty sure he doesn't get hurt the way Pop does – a way Pop describes as “forgetful” – but he's never been hurt bad enough to _really_ know for sure. He doesn't find any holes or missing pieces, though. “No, ma'am,” he says.

The older dragon snorts loudly. Her braided beard jingles softly as she shakes her head. “Well, you surely are your father's boy,” she says. “Name's not ma'am, it's Magdaw.”  
  
“Magdaw,” Amos repeats, letting the name sit on his tongue a minute. He nods, then realises he's walking behind Magdaw so she can't see him, so he adds: “Yes, Magdaw.”

“Good.”

Amos falls into an uneasy silence. Mama’s told him a hundred times not to tell anyone his name, but leaving the introduction half-finished seems rude somehow. He takes a deep breath. “I’m Amos.”

“’Pleasure, Amos,” Magdaw says.

They walk in silence a while more after that. Amos resists the urge to look behind them, to see if the stranger's unstuck themselves and is now pacing behind them just beyond the Road's magic. He doesn't feel that pink moon stare on him anymore. He keeps his eyes – all of them – pointed ahead.

“How d'you know Shushpup?” Amos asks.

“A who now?”

“My spider.”

He isn't sure, but he thinks maybe Magdaw gives a little laugh that spreads out slow and easy into a soft hum. “Made your pa's acquaintance when you was just little,” she says. “Your spider there'd been a mite scratched up. Nothin' so bad ol' Memaw couldn't handle it.”

“Shushpup got _hurt?”_ Amos stares down at the widow trundling along seemingly without a care beside Magdaw's boots. He'd thought the stranger would surely kick Shushpup to pieces for biting their eye out, and the thought of Shushpup getting hurt had made him terribly scared. Still does.

“Weren't nothin' to put her back to right,” Magdaw says.

Amos' eyes sting. He lifts his mask just enough to rub at them, and feels wet gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Thanks,” he says, “for helpin' her.” He's quiet a minute, then remembers himself: “An' for helpin' me.”

“No trouble't all,” Magdaw says. She hefts the rifle on her shoulder. “Easy when you just got the rifle to do the talkin'.”

“D'you know what – it – was?”

“Dunno exactly,” Magdaw says. “Some kinda wanderer, I reckon. It talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Skin-stealer, mayhap. Regular ol' monster folk don't talk much.”

Amos considers this for a moment. Mama's mentioned skin-stealers before, but only a little. Pop always changes the subject if he's in earshot. “Was it gonna take my skin?”

“Prob'ly not yours, no,” Magdaw says. “Bit too small. More'n likely, it was lookin' for anyone you know.”

Magdaw comes to a halt, then. She looks behind them, over Amos' head, squinting against the omnipresent glare of refracted sun to assess the way they've come.

“Coast's clear now, I reckon.” She lays a firm but gentle hand on Amos' shoulder and steers him off the Road. “I take it you live that-a-way?” She points toward the horizon, roughly in the direction of home. Amos reaches up, adjusts her hand a little so she's pointing in the right-er direction, and nods.  “Need some company?”

Amos feels a pang of something complicated at the thought of leaving the old dragon so soon. He wants to keep walking with her, maybe walk the whole of the Road with her if she'd let him – he's sure she'd be _able_ to, oldest dragon he's ever seen or not – and listen to her talk about skin-stealers and regular ol' monster folks and whatever else she feels like talking about on the way to wherever the Road actually goes. He stares towards home and, while it's now too far away for him to actually see, he imagines the thin curve of Mama's magic against the horizon. He sighs.

“Mama says not to bring company home,” Amos says.

“Well, you mind your Mama, then.” Magdaw gives him a soft pat on his shoulder and a smile that makes her whole face wrinkle up and dust flake off from around her eyes. She reaches into her many layers of clothes and pulls out a small leather pouch. She holds it out to him. “Cedarwood ash,” she says. “You meet any good-for-nothin's, you give 'em a snootful of that an' you run like hell, y'hear?”

Amos turns the pouch over in his hands, studying it. It smells _very much_ like cedarwood ash. “I will,” he says.

“An' you go _straight_ home, understood? No dilly-dallyin'.”

“Yes, Magdaw,” Amos says.

Magdaw gives him a playful shooing motion and he turns – reluctantly – and starts toward home. He manages a dozen or so steps before the impulse overtakes him and he turns around again. The old dragon is still standing there, watching him with a knowing expression.

“If I come back tomorrow, will you be here?” Amos calls.

He can hear Magdaw give a loud snort. “Where's here?”

Amos holds his arms out to encompass the surrounding Wasteland. “Here.”

Magdaw shrugs, making her many layers of cloth flap and settle almost rhythmically. “I s'pose.”

“If I come back tomorrow, an' you're here, will you tell me more about skin-stealers?”

Magdaw laughs at that. It's an ugly sound, rough and grating, and it makes Amos' heart feel lighter just to hear it. “Don't expect your parents'd thank me much for that,” she calls back. “I find you back here 'fore noon tomorrow, I'll tell you all there is to know about 'em.”


End file.
